Program Chair, Threat Intelligence; Assistant Professor, Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies
I am the Program Chair for Threat Intelligence and an Assistant Professor in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies. I also hold two non-resident fellowships: as an Irregular Warfare Fellow with the Irregular Warfare Institute and a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project.
Intellectually, I am most passionate about how non-state actors challenge our understanding of security and governance: how do they emerge, grow, thrive, and engage with communities around them? These are incredibly innovative actors who consistently defy the ‘rules’ of the international system and expose weaknesses within states. Their activities often come at a high human cost in the form of violent death, forced displacement, and corruption.
My work in threat intelligence builds on these questions by equipping students with the analytical frameworks and investigative tools needed to identify, track, and disrupt bad actors. Whether we’re analyzing online networks or global trafficking routes, the goal is the same: to better understand and anticipate emerging threats in a rapidly evolving globalized security landscape.
MIIS is an incredible environment to teach in because the students are smart, engaged, and bring a range of relevant experience from their professional lives to the classroom. At its best, teaching is a loud, fast-paced classroom where students are collaborating and building off each other to develop the tools and insights that will help them throughout their lives. More often than not, that dynamic is exactly what my classroom at MIIS feels like: messy, relevant, and exhilarating.
In my personal life, I enjoy reading fiction, traveling, and hiking with my dog.
Expertise
Dr. Katharine Petrich has been teaching courses in international relations and comparative politics since 2014. Petrich’s academic research is primarily concerned with international security issues, particularly those posed by violent non-state actors. Topically, her research focuses on insurgency, terrorism, and transnational crime in Latin America and the Horn of Africa. Petrich is dedicated to an ethnographic qualitative research approach and spends a significant amount of time in the field interviewing violent actors and their law enforcement counterparts. She is currently working on a project which uses satellite imagery to assess the connections between environmental crime and political violence in Latin America.
Previous Work
In addition to academic research, Petrich previously worked for the US Department of Justice, the US State Department, USMA Modern War Institute, and the Hudson Institute. In her pre-PhD life, she worked with the Trans-Border Institute as a researcher, documenting, recording, and coding homicide victims of cartel related violence. She contributed extensively to the Justice in Mexico News Monitor project, writing articles about narco-violence based on Spanish-language Mexican news. She is a Truman National Security Fellow and consults for both government agencies and policy think tanks.
Languages: English, Spanish
PhD, Political Science, Northeastern University (2019)
MA, International Relations, University of San Diego (2013)
BA, History and Political Science, University of San Diego (2010)
Aqil, Nauman, Katharine Petrich, & RV Gundur. (2023). Leveraging identity to overcome temporal and financial limitations in rapid ethnography in criminological research. Journal of Criminology, 56(2-3), 170-193. https://doi.org/10.1177/26338076231172521
Petrich, Katharine and Victor Asal. (2022) ‘I’d Like to Speak to the Person in Charge: Measuring Dominant Ethnopolitical Organizations in the Middle East’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 36(1), 75–89. DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2022.2106856.
Petrich, Katharine. (2020). “Crime-Terror Nexus.” In the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies. Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.608
Petrich, Katharine. “How crime is linked to al-Shabaab’s Survival Strategy.” The Conversation. 8 April 2020. https://theconversation.com/how-crime-is-closely-linked-to-al-shabaabs-survival-strategy-134432
Petrich, Katharine. (2019) “Cows, Charcoal, and Cocaine: al-Shabaab’s Criminal Activities in the Horn of Africa.” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. DOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2019.1678873
Petrich, Katharine and Phoebe Donnelly. (2019) “Worth Many Sins: al-Shabaab’s Shifting Relationship with Kenyan Women.” Small Wars and Insurgencies 30(6-7), 1169-1192. DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2019.1649814
Petrich, Katharine. “Al-Shabaab’s Mata Hari Network.” War on the Rocks. 14 August 2018. https://warontherocks.com/2018/08/al-shabaabs-mata-hari-network/
| by Sierra Abukins
The 12-month, STEM-designated program offers hands-on training in cyber threat analysis, financial crime investigation, and emerging security challenges, preparing graduates for a wide range of roles, especially in the private sector.
Dr. Petrich is a faculty member at the Middlebury Institute and an established expert on transnational violent extremism and terrorism threats, violent criminal networks, and insurgency.
